AHMEDABAD
The hotel industry seems to be revising its strategy of making investments in the state. Some hotels have been put on sale while others are restructuring themselves from five-star to budget hotels.
NG Group was in talks with Hilton to set up a 22-storey hotel at Gallops Mall on SG Road. However, the deal did not work out and the mall has been sold for Rs 150 crore to a city-based broker. Similarly, one of the most talked about hotels in the industry, InterContinental Hotels Group’s plans of bringing its five-star hotel Crowne Plaza is hanging due to some fall-out with UK-based Shiva Satya Group. The group has removed its Crowne Plaza branding from the building on SG Road and replaced it with Shiva Hotels hoarding.
Royal Orchid Hotels near Gujarat College has sold its 104-room hotel property in Ahmedabad to Gurgaon-based investment firm Samhi Hotels for Rs 67 crore as a part of a debt reduction plan. The hotel will now be re-branded to Sheraton Group’s budget hotel Four Points.
Among hotels with the ‘for sale’ sign is Novotel on SG Road as a result of Kanakia Group divesting their stakes in the hotel. “Most of these projects have come in more so as ‘ego properties’, without feasible studies. Besides, all the people putting up new properties are not hoteliers, they are mostly builders,” said Nirav Gandhi, executive committee member, Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India. Gandhi said that the hotel industry is seeing an occupancy rate as low as 48 per cent this year.
Full report here Times of India
